


Search & Rescue

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, F/M, Getting Together, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Light Angst, Road Trips, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25250185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: Narcissa isn't used to worrying about other people.
Relationships: Narcissa Black Malfoy/James Potter
Comments: 56
Kudos: 199





	1. New York, NY - Pittsburgh, PA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [persea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/persea/gifts).



> 1\. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL-AROUND PERFECT HUMAN BEING/ETERNAL RAY OF SUNSHINE [@ainsleyalvarez](http://www.ainsleyalvarez.tumblr.com)!!! 
> 
> 2\. this will have six chapters, total, four more of which are already written and just need a little sprucing up - i will be posting the second chapter on friday (7/17) and the remaining chapters every friday after that.
> 
> 3\. this is a road trip fic. like, they _go on a road trip_. i quite literally _planned a road trip_ just to write this fic. if you have ever wondered what narcissa black malfoy might order from a mcdonald's drive-thru at nine in the morning, look no further. we go there. we go there hard. we also go to the world's largest concrete totem pole, not to be confused with the world's largest non-concrete totem pole, which is not, unfortunately, featured in this story. maybe next time, gang.
> 
> 4\. comments/kudos/etc are very much appreciated, hope you enjoy, etc

* * *

(11:12 pm) _james_

(11:12 pm) _jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames_

(11:12 pm) _jamie_

(11:12 pm) _jamison_

(11:12 pm) _jaime_

(11:12 pm) _jaymes_

(11:12 pm) _lames_

(11:12 pm) _L A M E S_

(11:12 pm) _that wasnt a typo u dick_

(11:13 pm) _since when do u go to bed at an old person time_

(11:13 pm) _who r u_

(11:13 pm) _whtver_

(11:13 pm) _this v stupid thing im about to do is now legally ur fault_

(11:14 pm) _its v stupid_

(11:14 pm) _all ur fault_

(12:56 am) _RDFBGKJFDG0ER3451121** &tf^we&_

(12:56 am) _ndfvfdukffffffffffffkcukyofff_

(12:56 am) _REGUSDFBSJGDFVSDLOLOLOLOL0000022344444444_

(12:56 am) _REGULIO WDFVJDFJDFKSDKG_

(12:56 am) _WAS HERSCCCCVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV_

(12:56 am) _regulus was here that’s it that’s the tweet_

(1:33 am) _siri are banks open right now_

(1:33 am) _siri what the fuck_

(1:33 am) _siri are any banks in las vegas nevada open right now_

(1:49 am) _MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDLY BAY_

(1:59 am) _jamie_

(2:17 am) _im gona leave u for one of these shrks_

(2:17 am) _shwrks_

(2:17 am) _their teeth_

(2:20 am) _reggie and i were jst like_

(2:20 am) _thank christ mom wsnt a shrk u kno_

(2:21 am) _*shork_

(3:55 am) _siri are mobsters all really italian or can they also be other things such as british_

(3:55 am) _siri what is a peaky blinder_

(4:03 am) _siri how do you tell if a gun is real_

(4:09 am) _siri google british mobster convention las vegas nevada_

(4:44 am) _r got us kdnpaped_

(4:44 am) _rollsroyse_

(4:44 am) _sry i called u lames_

* * *

**_You have one (1) unheard message:_ **

_“Oh, god, oh, fuck, oh—listen to me, okay, just—Sirius, what the fuck, don’t touch that, it’s—yeah, it’s the fucking trigger, don’t pull it, Jesus Christ, I’m trying to call Narcissa—oh, please, like your idiot Neanderthal buddies are going to do anything useful, they wouldn’t even be able to spell their own names if their moms didn’t still write them on their fucking underwear, they’re—oh, motherfucking rat-fuck piece of fedora-wearing shit—Narcissa? Narcissa, god, okay, we’re in a bit of, um, a bit of a pickle, we’re—shut the fuck up, Sirius, no, the pickle is not kosher—and can’t, um, can’t really involve the police, if you catch my—oh, oh, oh, oh, that’s bad, that’s bad, that’s really—”_

* * *

Narcissa isn't used to worrying about other people.

That sounds bad—callous, unfeeling, cold, et cetera; the adjectives will always be endless, their meaning perfectly clear—but her social circle, strictly speaking, has never exactly encouraged the practice. There’s her sisters, neither of whom seem to want her help, her _concern_ , despite the overwhelming pile of evidence that indicates they do, in fact, need both, and there’s her parents, who are retired and miserable and eighty-percent plastic at this point, anyway, languishing in a Prozac-fueled stupor in the house on Narragansett, militantly ignoring one another, and there’s _Lucius,_ who—

Well.

The less concern Narcissa has for him, the better, frankly.

But then there’s Regulus.

Sweet, simple Regulus who tries so hard to be neither sweet nor simple, ever, but who can’t quite shed the soft, supple snakeskin of the very young and the impossibly naive. Narcissa owns handbags that are sturdier, hardier, more weatherproof, less high-maintenance, than Regulus.

She’d _told_ him not to do this.

Not to go on this trip.

Not to go on this trip with _Sirius_ —and, god, Narcissa can barely think the name “Sirius” without grimacing; he is the irrefutable, inarguable embodiment of everything wrong with the public-school system—awful, arrogant Sirius, who’s having a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of 22 just because, what, his friends are all moving out of the proverbial frat house? Acquiring hobbies? Careers? Monogamous relationships with people rather than specific body parts?

Narcissa certainly wouldn’t have been willing to go to _Las Vegas_ with him.

Regulus, however—sweet, simple Regulus, so easy to sway, to convince, to manipulate—he’d leapt at the chance. To be close to Sirius. To _reconnect_ with Sirius by spending a weekend gallivanting around that lawless desert hellscape filled with gold-dusted French fries and opportunistic strippers and enough unchecked chlamydia to stun an _Entourage_ -themed bachelor party.

And now Regulus—sweet, simple Regulus—is embroiled in god only knows what kind of scandal, entrenched in god only knows what kind of _mess_ , and it’s somehow _Narcissa’s_ job to fix it. To clean it up. She’s armed herself with lots of cash and lots of pepper spray and lots of sound legal advice from her father’s suspiciously relaxed attorneys and if things get _really_ dire, the ragged, well-worn, wine-stained business card of an incredibly discreet FBI agent who may or may not be married to one of her long-lost, long-forgotten, long-disowned sisters.

The worry, though.

The worry is sharp. Acidic. Difficult to swallow.

 _Urgent_.

That urgency is, of course, the only reason Narcissa is _here_ , on an airplane, trying to get comfortable in a wildly uncomfortable business-class seat—she’s flying commercial; someone in her family tree is currently rolling over in their exceptionally well-appointed grave—and sipping her third glass of complimentary champagne just the tiniest bit too quickly.

“Gulping” is, perhaps, the correct term.

Not that Narcissa does that.

Gulp.

Gulps.

She does _not_.

She also does not get drunk in public, which would be the consequence of doing that. Of gulping. On an empty stomach. After spin class. And a Lucius-related Google alert.

Regardless—irregardless—no, _regardless,_ it doesn’t actually matter whether she’s sipping the champagne or gulping the champagne or knocking the champagne back like it’s a round of ill-advised tequila shots at her _other_ long-lost, long-forgotten, long-disowned sister’s creepy sex dungeon housewarming party, since it isn’t even champagne. It does not qualify as champagne. It’s swill. Slightly sour, disgustingly bitter, entirely subpar grocery store _swill_ that probably isn’t even from France. It’s probably sparkling wine. Carbonated grape juice. Bottled in a _Snapple_ factory and then bought in bulk. On _sale._

Narcissa spares a moment to hope, fervently, that she manages to pass out before her seatmate— _seatmate,_ honestly; this isn’t _summer camp_ —shows up to join her.

Alas.

_C’est la vie._

Not all disasters can be avoided.

“Hey, I think this is—oh, _holy fuck_ ,” her apparent seatmate, master of the untimely arrival, blurts out. How charming. Narcissa is charmed. Narcissa is _dizzy._ “What are _you_ doing here?”

Narcissa glances up from the dregs of her fake champagne, reluctantly feigning a polite, appropriately distant interest in . . . _whoever_ this man is, but almost immediately does a double-take. Horrified. Disbelieving.

“Oh,” she says faintly, staring, wide-eyed, at—what’s his name. She knows this, she _does,_ he’s Sirius’s little gal pal. The hair gel heir. His family owns a house on the same stretch of Bar Harbor beach as _Lucius—_ “Potter.” She snaps her fingers. “Jackson. Jaylen. What is the, the whiskey, the one from—Jameson?”

Potter—Jack? Jace?—scowls at her, his handsome, angular features twisting with annoyance. Indignation. Like he’s upset, however trivially, by her inability to remember who he is. He’s remarkably tan. Brown. Bronze. Chiseled. Like a garden statue.

“How do you not—we’ve _met,_ like, multiple—no, nope, whatever, I don’t give a shit. I’m James,” he says, sighing, slinging a Yale Men’s Lacrosse backpack into the overhead bin—the _overhead bin_ , Narcissa’s ancestors are definitely weeping into their Carrera marble headstones right now—and then dropping down into the seat next to hers. He’s tall, she notices. Tall and broad-shouldered and gracefully athletic, long-limbed and leanly muscled; his hair is a mess, jet-black and wavy, but maybe a bit like he’s styled it that way on purpose, and his glasses are thick-framed and expensive-looking for all that the rest of him is a rumpled, mismatched, inexplicably attractive composite of hipster-jock chic meets seventh-grade skate park with a twist of competitive beer can pyramid building. “Narcissa Black, huh?”

Narcissa swallows the last of her fake champagne and wordlessly lifts her arm, holding up the empty cup and waving it back and forth. A signal. A beacon. A plea. “Well,” she says coolly, “at least one of us is memorable.”

Potter huffs, shoving his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. “Was Sirius adopted?”

“Excuse me?”

“I have this theory about all that elitist asshole bullshit being genetic and your whole family, minus Sirius, is the _perfect_ case study for it.”

Narcissa would normally be able to refrain from rolling her eyes, but, well, the _gulping_. “Not that I don’t love a good inbreeding joke—”

“Wait, _what?”_

“—which is where I presume you were very, ah, very _cleverly_ going with—” She flaps her wrist. “All of that—”

“Are you drunk?”

“—but I really have to ask, even though I emphatically _do not_ want to—” She hiccups, startling herself. “Are you flying to Vegas for the same reason I am, or is this just a _tremendous_ coincidence?”

* * *

Narcissa wakes up in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania, otherwise known as _not_ Nevada.

She sits up slowly, peering out the dingy Plexiglass window, confused—alarmed—confused _and_ alarmed—by the unexpected sight of a luggage cart. A luggage cart being wheeled across airport tarmac. Airport tarmac that the airplane is parked on. The airplane that is, allegedly, taking her to Nevada.

A terrible thought strikes.

“Why,” she starts, turning towards Potter. James. No, Potter. He’s glaring at his phone, scrolling through a text thread that appears, from her vantage point, to be almost entirely one-sided. He’s bouncing his knee. Like he’s impatient. Like he can’t sit still. He’s wearing basketball shorts. Black. Casual. She’s wearing yoga pants. Black. Casual. The lack of visual contrast is . . . jarring. Unsettling. “Why are we stopped? What did I miss?”

Potter shakes his head. “Unreal.”

“What is?”

“That you _slept_ through that.”

“Through _what?”_

“It legit sounded like when the dragon died in _Game of Thrones_. It was so loud. Are you—like, do you have earplugs in?”

Narcissa grits her teeth. “No.”

“AirPods?”

 _“No_.”

“Unreal,” he says again, clucking his tongue. “You should get that checked out. Sign up for a sleep study or something.”

She inwardly counts to five. “What _happened?”_

“Oh, fuck if I know.”

“There wasn’t an announcement?”

Potter shrugs, infuriatingly nonchalant, and then swipes at his phone, opening a new app, tapping a few times. “No, there was.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Her nostrils flare. “I see.”

“I _super_ doubt that, actually.”

Before she can reply, he’s smoothly pocketing his phone, unbuckling his seatbelt, and standing up to grab his backpack, slinging it over his shoulder and then ducking down to look at her. To raise his eyebrows at her. His gaze wanders, flitting down, skimming her exposed collarbones, the satin-shiny straps of her bra.

“It’s a mechanical failure,” he stage-whispers, straightening back up. Lifting his arm to rummage around the overhead bin. “There aren’t any other flights to Vegas, either, not until tomorrow night. Big poker tournament. Weird airport. Which one is yours?”

Narcissa blinks. “Excuse me?”

“Found it, yeah, wow, never mind,” Potter says, brandishing her bright orange Hermes weekender and jerking his chin towards the exit. “You coming?”

“Coming _where?”_

A smirk curls around the edges of his mouth.

* * *

There is an unnecessarily enormous display of glossy, brightly-colored travel brochures set up against the wall adjacent to the car rental counter.

Narcissa is studying them, her sunglasses pushed back over her hair, her head cocked and her posture stiff—Regulus’s phone is still switched off, and _Sirius’s_ phone still has her number blocked, and the waitlist to legally charter a private plane is approximately forty hours too long.

“Smile, princess,” Potter says confidently, brashly, nudging her ribs with his elbow like they’re . . . friends. Like they’re friendly. Narcissa is positive it’s all an act; a defense mechanism; a mask, a persona, that he doesn’t understand how to take off. They are not friends. They are not friendly. “This’ll be fun.”

“I _super_ doubt that, actually,” she drawls, deadpan, plucking a brochure for an Andy Warhol museum out of the rack. “Nightmares aren’t fun.”

“Hitting the open road is a nightmare? _Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?_ Slice of life Americana?” He drums his fingers against the counter, the muscles in his forearm cording. Flexing. “The Grand Canyon is over there, right, we could totally stop. I’ve been there before, I think, but I was, like, hella high.”

“Besides, isn’t this a waste of time? Driving? It’ll take days.”

“Not if I speed.”

“Um, you aren’t driving.”

“ _Um_ , yes, I am.”

“ _If_ I agree to this massively idiotic plan—”

“Hey,” Potter protests, craning his neck to pout at her. Playfully. Exaggeratedly. More pretense. “It’s only a _little_ idiotic.”

“—I will not be entrusting _my_ safety or that of our—” Narcissa sneers at the car keys resting on top of the rental contract. “—base model Ford Explorer with the XM Satellite Radio option—to _you_.”

“I am an excellent driver.”

“Route 66 isn’t the Autobahn.”

“It’s also not a death trap,” he says with obvious exasperation. “Jesus, are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“ _Uptight_.”

“In my experience,” she says, reflexively clutching the brochure for the Andy Warhol museum, crumpling the bottom, “the word ‘ _uptight’_ is just the misogynistic twin brother of the word ‘ _sensible’_. If your intention was to insult me, you’ll have to try harder.”

Potter’s expression changes, then, summarily, materially, but Narcissa isn’t familiar enough with him or his face to parse out the nuance of it. She wishes, for a brief, blindly stupid moment, that she _was_.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, tucking his hands into the pockets of his shorts and rocking back on the heels of his ratty leather flip-flops. “I, uh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did.”

He hesitates. “Yeah, alright, I did, but I didn’t mean it like—like _that_.”

“ _Yes_ , you _did_.”

He licks his lips, the line of his jaw tensing, then relaxing, then tensing again as he clears his throat. “Listen, I really—I can’t do nothing about this, about Sirius, for an entire fucking _day_ ,” he admits, almost too quietly for her to hear. “I can’t sit in a hotel room or pace around the airport or—” He gestures vaguely to the brochure display. “Or go on a _bridge and tunnel tour_. Okay? I have to _do_ something. It won’t take that much longer to drive. If you really don’t want to come, that’s fine, it’s not like—”

“Okay,” Narcissa interrupts. She feels curiously warm. And also like she might have whiplash. The symptoms are myriad—dry mouth, woozy headache, sweaty palms—and can likely be generally attributed to her dawning, gnawing, late afternoon hangover, but she suspects there’s more to it than that. Anger. Helplessness. Worry. “Okay, let’s go.”

Narcissa is not, at heart, deep, deep down, a particularly selfish person.

She’s just _supposed_ to be.

* * *


	2. Albion, IN - Effingham, IL

* * *

“ _Last year I was 21,”_ Potter sings, wildly pitchy, ear-splittingly loud—not that Narcissa can actually hear anything over the scratchy, discordant wailing of the car stereo. The bass is thumping. The speakers are crackling. It’s like being backstage at a high school talent show but inarguably, undeniably _worse_. “ _I didn’t have a lot of fun—_ ”

Narcissa takes a deep, calming breath and draws her legs up onto the edge of her seat, knees to her chest, bare feet slip-sliding against cool beige leather. Her toenails are painted a pale, milky blue. Young. Playful. Innocent.

She hates it.

Outside, darkness is swarming, gradually blanketing the lazily winding highway, the sky above starless and velvety and more purple than black, like it’s bruised rather than rotten; there’s the occasional twinkling yellow light of a house, a gas station, a power line, but they’ve been driving through a seemingly endless void of cornfields and dairy farms and not a whole lot else for _hours_.

She hates that, too.

“ _And now I’m gonna be 22,_ ” Potter bellows, mime-twirling a pair of drumsticks and revving the engine as he speeds up to change lanes. “ _I say oh my and a—”_

“ _Boo hoo_ ,” Narcissa sighs drolly, reaching out to slam the power button on the radio. Silence falls—blessedly, beautifully, finally—and Potter coughs up a disgruntled warbling sound to hide how long it took him to notice. “No more music. We are done with music. Music has been terminated.”

He wrinkles his nose, the taillights of a moving truck glinting emergency-room red in his glasses. “Driver gets aux, though.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s a _rule_. Of life. And road trips. And _life.”_

“So are speed limits.”

“No,” he says, rolling his shoulders back, stretching his right arm out so that it’s resting on top of the steering wheel and his hand is hanging down. A bunch of musty leather wannabe stoner bracelets are tangled around his wrist; some woven, some knotted, some bleached pale and soft from the sun. “Speed limits are _laws._ Those are different.”

“I am not dignifying any of this with an argument.”

“What do _you_ want to listen to, then?” he asks, audibly impatient. “NPR? Beethoven? A podcast about, like, calligraphy or Botox or charity gala planning?”

She looks at him askance. “Is that what you think I’m interested in?”

His snorts, his mouth quirking, the angle of it—the emotion behind the angle of it—difficult to make out in the semi-light. “No. Definitely not.”

Several responses to that immediately spring to mind, lie heavy and terse on the tip of her tongue; questions, rebuttals, scathing and flat and deliberately impersonal. It irks her. His tone. His demeanor. “ _Definitely not.”_ James Potter doesn’t _know_ her; “definitely” or otherwise. He knows her name and he knows her reputation and he knows whatever bitterly unflattering portrait of her that Sirius—awful, arrogant Sirius—has painted for him.

Unbidden, Narcissa’s reminded of the very last gift she received from Lucius—a gorgeous, limited-edition, diamond-crusted Patek with her initials laser-engraved onto the bottom.

Well.

Her _future_ initials.

Her would-have-been future initials.

She’d hated it at the time, fiercely, instinctually, just like she now hates the color of her nail polish and the gaping, moonless, Midwestern horizon skating across her periphery. Because “N” comes _after_ “M” in the alphabet, not before, which is a perfectly pointless observation—or would be, at least, if she weren’t still clinging to the wrongness of that sight, of the order of the letters, of her visceral rejection of them—a solid eighteen months after the fact.

“We’re stopping at the next hotel we see,” Narcissa announces, dropping her chin onto her knees and shifting in her seat so she can more efficiently stare out the window. There’s a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke wedged into the side pocket of her door. It’s sloshing around. Fighting to get out. “I’m tired.”

* * *

The next hotel they see is a Holiday Inn Express with a flickering neon sign and a suspiciously full parking lot.

“This is your fault,” Narcissa says, following Potter into their room—their _shared_ room with the ancient, sputtering air-conditioner and the _single_ king-sized bed—and glaring at the back of his neck. He has the straps of both her bag and his backpack looped around one hand, and his shoulders are tense, muscles bunched up and straining against the seams of his flimsy white t-shirt. “For the record.”

“How? _How_ is it my fault there’s a cross-country fucking _bird-watching tour_ staying here tonight?”

She sniffs. “We could still be in Pittsburgh.”

“Are you really—” He spins around, features slack with outrage. Incredulity. “Are you _upset_ that we aren’t still in Pittsburgh? Of all places? _Pittsburgh?”_

“Don’t be absurd.”

“ _You_ don’t be absurd!”

“I’m _upset,_ ” she says, chin tilting up, “that you’re going to be even more insufferable than usual tomorrow.”

Potter’s eyes narrow a fraction. “Because you snore?”

“I do _not_ snore.”

“Uh, yeah, princess, you do. Like an elephant.” He pauses, considering, and then adds, almost guiltily, “A really unfairly hot elephant.”’

Narcissa’s lip curls. “Elephants don’t snore, either.”

“Yeah, they do.”

“No, they—honk.”

“That’s geese.”

“Fine, they bleat.”

“Goats.”

“ _Trumpet_.”

“That is . . . a musical instrument.”

“No, that’s what _elephants_ do,” Narcissa says imperiously. There’s a smoke alarm right above her head. Popcorn ceiling. Brown, formless water stains. “They _trumpet_.”

Potter groans, long and guttural and frustrated, depositing her bag on the rickety little oak-veneered desk by the window. He holds onto his backpack. “Christ, who cares?”

“You, obviously.”

“Uh, I didn’t start that.”

“You accused me of snoring.”

“Okay, so, first of all, snoring isn’t a _crime_ , no matter what they taught you at Socialite Barbie school—”

“It isn’t about the _snoring_ , it’s about the—” She breaks off, a mortifying heat creeping into her cheeks. _Definitely not,_ he’d said. Definitely. _Definitely._ “I only snore after I drink. I do not drink often. _Therefore_ , I _do not snore_.”

His eyebrows fly up, practically of their own volition, and then he rakes his free hand through his hair, dragging his fingers down to scratch at his neck. At the prickly shadow of stubble there. Stubble, because he isn’t clean-shaven. Because he’s the kind of well-groomed that’s predicated on the notion of not _appearing_ well-groomed.

People who work that hard to look like something they fundamentally are not, like something they are fundamentally never going to be, are inherently untrustworthy.

Narcissa would know.

“Besides,” she goes on, tartly, archly, like a sour squeeze of lemon in a glass of ice-cold water, “that isn’t what I meant.”

“It’s . . . not?”

“You’re going to be even more insufferable than usual tomorrow—”

Potter grimaces.

“—because you’re going to be sleeping on the _floor_.”

* * *

(10:59 pm) **you better be alive**

(10:59 pm) **if you aren’t alive i won’t get to kill you myself**

(11:00 pm) **and man**

(11:00 pm) **i need that**

(11:00 pm) **the satisfaction of it**

(11:00 pm) **the vindication**

(11:00 pm) **i fucking deserve it**

(11:03 pm) **then again**

(11:03 pm) **your cousin might legit kill me first**

(11:04 pm) **beat me to death with her birkin**

(11:11 pm) **she is**

(11:19 pm) **like you know when you’re boiling water and right before it actually boils it**

(11:19 pm) **sort of … hisses**

(11:20 pm) **simmers?**

(11:20 pm) **like you can TELL it’s about to explode**

(11:20 pm) **really ominous shit**

(11:25 pm) **she HATES me lol**

(11:28 pm) **i asked her if she wanted any snacks earlier and she just pretended not to hear me and rolled her window back up**

(11:28 pm) **but somehow made it threatening????**

(11:30 pm) **it felt like a thread**

(11:30 pm) ***threat**

(11:30 pm) **i felt threatened**

(11:37 pm) **my back hurts**

(11:43 pm) **why do girls wear pajamas that look like lingerie??????????**

(11:43 pm) **seems like an excessive amount of lace**

(11:45 pm) **just**

(11:45 pm) **not a necessary amount of lace at all**

(11:56 pm) **fuck you by the way**

(12:08 am) **youre a fucking idiot and no that is not my fault**

(12:58 am) **are there even any fucking birds in indiana**

* * *

**_Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice messaging system. REGULUS BLACK is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up or press “1” for more options:_ **

_“You are such a stupid—idiot—unfathomable_ imbecile _, I can’t believe—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“Regulus. Darling. I loathe you. I despise you. If you are still alive to listen to this after I’ve found you, you won’t be for long, and that’s a—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“Do you understand what I’m doing for you? How I’m suffering? I’m suffering, Regulus. I’m trapped in a_ rental car _with a disposable air freshener and some kind of, of—sentient beast mode hashtag—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“I told your mother you were at a very exclusive artists’ retreat in Death Valley. California. Communing with nature. Moisturizing with rattlesnake venom. I don’t—she didn’t believe me, of course, but if she asks, that’s what I—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“Can you please just . . . I can’t—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“We’re in Indiana. Or—Illinois. I’m not sure what the difference is. We’re two days away, I think. Something like that. James Potter, who is just as obnoxious as you said he was, has all of Sirius’s passwords—to everything, for some reason—so we’ll be starting at where the last charge on his AmEx was. I miss—I hope you’re alright. Safe. I hope you’re safe.”_

* * *

In the morning, Narcissa drives.

“Could we maybe—”

“No.”

“It’ll only take, like, an hour, tops. Max. Forty minutes if we skip the tour.”

“ _No_.”

“But they have _lions_ ,” Potter whines, waving his phone at her from where he’s slouched in the passenger seat, legs spread wide, a flat-brimmed Rangers hat on backwards and a grease-speckled McDonald’s bag at his feet. The scent of rubbery eggs and processed cheese and mystery meat masquerading as breakfast sausage is pervasive. Stomach-churning. The remnants of her parfait are congealing in the center console cupholder, ashy granola and half-frozen blueberries and watery vanilla yogurt. “And tigers! And bears!”

“Oh, _my.”_

He huffs out a laugh, shaking his head as he leans forward to rifle through the McDonald’s bag. He resurfaces with another hash brown—god, how many did he _order_ —and then squints at her, oddly thoughtful.

“What do you do, anyway?”

“What do I . . . _do?”_

“Like, do you have a job?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Do _you_ have a job?”

“That is _also_ not an answer, but yeah, I do.” He bounces his knee a little. Cracks his knuckles. Like he’s nervous. “I run a lax camp. Lacrosse. Off-season. We’re a startup, technically, and the focus is mostly on community outreach now so we don’t have, like, a track record of success yet exactly but the goal, ultimately, is to kind of have some kids feed into the better, more professional college programs and, like, expand the D1 scholarship pool? So it isn’t just . . . rich white guys from Connecticut?”

Narcissa blinks as she processes all of that. “You work with _children?”_

“Yeah?”

She straightens her shoulders, carefully correcting her posture. “I’m a writer.”

“You’re a—wait, what?”

“A writer,” she says again, as blandly as she can manage—which is quite bland. “I write.”

Potter takes a disgustingly large, open-mouthed bite of his hash brown, chewing noisily. “What do you, uh—what do you write? Exactly?”

“Books.”

“Books?”

“Surely you’ve heard of them.”

He swallows, thumbing at the hash brown wrapper. “What do you—like, how do you—what kind of books?”

“Fiction.”

“Fiction?”

“Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”

“Does Sirius, like, not know?” Potter asks tentatively. Awkwardly. With evident bewilderment. “That you do that? Write?”

“Why would he?”

“Well—”

“It isn’t a secret,” Narcissa says sharply. “But I have a pseudonym. There is no discernible public connection between my career and my family.”

Potter doesn’t reply for a while. He’s frowning, she can practically sense it—practically taste it, the cadence of it, strumming through the stale, still air like a flurry of newly disturbed dust motes. Seeping into her skin. Clogging her pores. She has her hair tied back in a high, sleek ponytail; the end of it keeps grazing her bare shoulders, catching on the straps of her tank top, sending a twitchy, uncomfortable shiver of awareness skittering down her spine. His frown is like that.

_Feels_ like that.

“Okay,” he says eventually, with an almost tangibly forced brightness, like he’s determined to—what, distract himself? Clumsily change the subject? Make this entire trip as painful as possible? “So, no super cool exotic animal rescue. What about a car museum? Do you like cars?”

“No.”

“No, you don’t like cars?”

“No, we don’t have _time_ for a _car museum.”_

“So . . . you _do_ like cars?” he presses, and there’s an edge to how he’s watching her now, to how he’s studying her, like at some point in the past twenty-four hours he decided to direct all that pent-up playground bully energy into figuring out the best and most productive ways to irritate her. “They have a bunch of Corvettes. Like, the good ones, from before they were suburban dad child support trophies.”

“My father collects Corvettes. He has a garage upstate.”

“No shit,” Potter says, huffing out another laugh. Louder. Breathier. More genuine. “Irony, thy name is—”

Narcissa’s lips curve upwards—the teeniest tiniest hint of the most reluctant smile she’s ever repressed—before she delicately clears her throat and reaches up to adjust the rear view mirror.

* * *


	3. St. Louis, MO - Foyil, OK

* * *

There are real hotels in St. Louis—presumably because St. Louis is a real city with both a real airport _and_ real high-speed internet access—and Narcissa settles into her room with a heartfelt, exhausted sigh, tension all but bleeding out of her as she deposits her bag on the polished mahogany luggage rack.

It’s a suite.

Private.

Top floor.

As optimal as can reasonably be expected on such short notice.

She calls down to the concierge and orders a canister of Hawaiian black lava bath salts from the spa. She takes a multivitamin. She dozes on a bed outfitted in sheets that don’t have a lower thread-count than she does an IQ, and she unearths the wooden chest of essential oils that Andromeda—or, more likely, Andromeda’s little suburban housewife pyramid scheme—secretly sent her for Christmas, and she makes a point of sniffing every single bottle whose label includes the words “SOOTHING” or “CALMING” or “BETTER THAN SEX, ACTUALLY.”

Narcissa _relaxes_.

And then—

Potter, as is his habit, almost immediately has to go and ruin it.

Narcissa is stepping off the elevator, gold-tinted mirrored doors swishing shut behind her, when he darts out from behind a nearby potted plant—manicured, ornamental, emerald green—and sidles up next to her, raking his fingers through his hair. He has on a pale yellow button-down, vivid against the dark, sunbaked brown of his skin, and a pair of tight, lightly distressed jeans.

“Did you see what Sirius just posted?” Potter demands. He digs his phone out of his pocket—he struggles a bit, needing to roll his hips and twist his wrist around—and then taps at the screen a few times, angling his body towards hers as they walk towards the restaurant. “Un-fucking-believable.”

Narcissa glances around the marble-tiled lobby. It’s not quite bustling; crowded enough that their entrance isn’t notable, loud enough that Potters’ guiding, hovering, impossibly warm hand on the small of her back isn’t revelatory, but not so much of either that the atmosphere is crushing. Oppressive. Distracting.

“Did I see what?” she asks, carefully, audibly bored. She’s wearing a dress—long, loose, casual and summery and a tastefully muted shade of pink—but not a bra, and she catches Potter’s gaze flutter down, lingering on the shape of her breasts, almost like he can’t help himself, before he clears his throat and looks away.

“Sirius, uh, he posted something on Instagram,” Potter says, tongue curling over his bottom lip. “Did you really not see?”

Narcissa pulls a face. “I don’t follow him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s awful. Did Regulus post anything?”

“I don’t know,” Potter drawls, lowering his arm and ducking around her so he can heave open the restaurant door. “I don’t _follow_ him.”

Narcissa grits her teeth. “What did Sirius post?”

“A picture.”

“Cute.”

“The filter he used? Yeah, it’s fucking adorable.”

Narcissa snatches the phone out of Potter’s hand. “Is that—” She cocks her head, incredulous. The picture is . . . fine. Inconspicuous. Unnerving. It’s of Regulus and Sirius, but they’re _grinning_ , disheveled, dressed up like Blues Brothers impersonators and seated at an outdoor cast-iron patio table; they’re toasting each other with cut-crystal tumblers of what must be whiskey, unlit cigars hanging out of their mouths, a rash of empty plastic cups and scattered matchbooks and discarded fedoras strewn behind them. “Why are they so _greasy?”_

Potter stares at her. His glasses are slightly crooked. Narcissa is overcome by an appalling, incomprehensible urge—to reach out, to reach up, to straighten his glasses and fix his hair and feel if the grain of the stubble on his jaw is his rough as it looks.

“How is _that_ your main takeaway from this?” he bleats, gesturing to the picture. “It’s tagged—this was taken at _Thunder Down Under_. They made us think they got _kidnapped_. Who gives a shit how _sweaty_ they are?”

“Sweaty and greasy aren’t remotely the same thing.”

“Are you fucking _kidding_ —”

“Also, I never thought they were kidnapped,” Narcissa goes on, blatantly lying, stubbornly undeterred. “Is that what _you_ thought?”

“Yes!”

“And you didn’t call the police?”

“Sirius said—I mean, if they were, you know, hanging out with, with, criminals, and, you know, committing crimes with—”

“Really? _Committing crimes?”_

“Well, what did _you_ think happened?” Potter asks, stealing his phone back with an irritable, uncertain frown. “You seemed pretty fucking worried, too.”

Narcissa bites the tip of her tongue and smiles thinly. “I wouldn’t dream of speculating,” she demurs, her lashes fanning down, shielding her from the brunt of his scrutiny. “Boys will be boys and all that—oh, our table’s ready.”

* * *

(11:00 pm) **okay so hear me out**

(11:00 pm) **i’ve been thinking about this for like two straight days**

(11:04 pm) **narcissa is angry all the time**

(11:05 pm) **specifically**

(11:06 pm) **narcissa is angry at ME all the time**

(11:06 pm) **because she’s the kind of person who orders a grilled chicken salad**

(11:06 pm) **WITH NO DRESSING**

(11:07 pm) **at a steakhouse**

(11:07 pm) **that’s it**

(11:07 pm) **mystery solved**

(11:08 pm) **the moment i convince her to eat a cheeseburger is the moment i win her over**

(11:14 pm) **or just win**

(11:14 pm) **more generally**

(11:20 pm) **it has nothing to do with her**

(11:20 pm) **fuck her am i right**

(11:20 pm) **NOT LIKE THAT**

(11:39 pm) **whatever**

(11:50 pm) **it’s weird though**

(11:55 pm) **isn’t it**

(11:56 pm) **i mean not to brag but i’m considered a pretty likeable guy**

(11:58 pm) **her hating you makes sense**

(11:59 pm) **tons of people hate you**

(12:00 am) **including me**

(12:00 am) **right now**

(12:01 am) **but her hating ME is just**

(12:03 am) **its unnatural**

(12:03 am) **irrational**

(12:07 am) **like why**

(12:07 am) **what have i done to deserve it**

(12:10 am) **the answer is nothing**

(12:10 am) **i have done nothing to deserve it**

(12:10 am) **i have been a perfect fucking gentleman**

(12:11 am) **and she has been TESTING me**

(12:16 am) **man**

(12:22 am) **she has been testing me HARD**

(12:45 am) **google says the eiffel tower replica in vegas is 540 feet tall**

(12:45 am) **im gonna throw you off of it**

* * *

**_Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice messaging system. REGULUS BLACK is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up or press “1” for more options:_ **

_“Imagine, if you will, a grown adult man asking a Michelin-starred chef to prepare him a plate of_ onion rings _so that he can then_ place _the onion rings on top of his_ filet mignon _—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“Hello. Regulus. Remember when I drew the short straw and had to be the one to go collect Bellatrix from that religious compound? In Greece? Your mother said it was the “good” kind of cult which was somehow only, like, the fifth or sixth most concerning aspect of that whole—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“I am on what my future biographers will doubtless refer to as ‘the road trip from hell’ and I will be suing you for emotional duress as soon as—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“It’s like he’s playing that game, that board game, what’s it—Guess Who? Yeah? Like he’s trying to, to, yes-or-no, true-or-false, do you like_ cars _, Narcissa, are you allergic to_ shellfish _, Narcissa, please, Narcissa, let me hold open another door for you while I flirt with my own reflection and smile like a smug—infuriating—”_

**_Please press “3” to re-record your message:_ **

_“Regulus. Hi. Hello. We’ve made it to St. Louis. I saw that Sirius posted a picture of the two of you earlier, on Instagram, and I . . . I don’t know. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know what that picture meant. I don’t know if I should be doing something else. For you. Something more. For . . . for . . .”_

**_Your voice message has timed out. Please call back and try again._ **

* * *

Watching James Potter eat pancakes is an experience.

An event.

A trial.

Like one of those obstacle courses with the mud pits and the rope walls and the balance beams at the military academy her parents were always threatening to send Andromeda to.

“Honestly,” Narcissa muses, her nose scrunched up, her lips pursed, her fingers laced together in her lap, “it’s _amazing_ that you only need a single fork to do that.”

Potter tosses an uneasy, entirely too confounded glance in her direction, chewing—no, _gnawing_ on a semi-burnt strip of bacon. His t-shirt is a vibrant carnelian red, with a bright white periodic table printed across the chest. Except—she peers at it more closely—instead of chemicals, the abbreviations appear to be for lacrosse terms. _Bucket. Cannon. Goose._

“Huh?” he asks, swallowing thickly. “Do what?”

“I hesitate to call it _eating_ , but—”

“Oh, come on.”

She arches a brow. “Come on?”

“Just because I don’t get all my nutrients from, like, scrambled egg whites and unsweetened grapefruit juice and the mortal souls of my enemies from prep school—”

“It’s not _what_ you’re eating so much as _how_ you’re eating it,” Narcissa interrupts, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Squeezing her thighs together. “Which is to say—all at the same time.”

“Sorry,” Potter snorts, shoveling another towering mound of syrup-drenched pancakes, overstuffed Denver omelet, and herb-studded skillet potatoes into his mouth. “Are my _table manners_ offending you?”

“Those aren’t table manners. They’re a cry for help.”

“Nah, I aced cotillion.”

“You have bell pepper stuck in your teeth.”

“Oh, is that what that is?”

“Yes. It is.”

“Rad.”

“Rad,” she echoes, peering dubiously around the restaurant. Diner. Salmonella trap. It’s . . . _quaint,_ endearingly run-down, an anachronistic snapshot of a decade she likely wasn’t even alive for—puckered vinyl booths and sizzling, scorch-marked flattops, a dusty jukebox and an out-of-order soda fountain and a scarily maternal trio of interchangeable middle-aged waitresses who may or may not all be named DARLENE. “Sure.”

Potter puffs his cheeks out, not unlike a chipmunk, and picks up his chipped beige porcelain trucker mug, making a huge, disgusting show of sipping and slurping and swishing his coffee around, practically gargling it.

“You know,” he says, leaning forward, lowering his voice to a deep, gravelly, suggestive whisper, “I really haven’t had any complaints about my _eating_ habits before now.”

Narcissa blinks at him, startled, her eyes going wide, her stomach lurching, twisting itself into knots, as she processes what he’s just said, the joke he’s just made, her brain automatically supplying her with images—with _ideas—_

She’s appalled to discover that she’s fighting a smile, too.

A _smile._

“That was terrible,” she manages to scoff.

“No,” he says, going back to sopping up egg yolk and bacon grease with a heavily buttered slice of sourdough toast. “It was awesome.”

His mouth is tilted up towards one side, the wispy, penciled-in outline of a dangerous, altogether discomfiting smirk; she doesn’t understand why, either, not until he turns his attention to the rest of his plate. It happens quickly: he swipes his fork through the skillet potatoes, clumsily piling them up, and then flings them across the table.

At _her_.

He misses, of course, because there’s no good, solid, tried-and-true method to properly aim a forkful of food, regardless of what a generation’s worth of summer camp movies have intimated, and she’s only actually hit by a faint spray of oily, lukewarm potato residue, salty like the ocean during storm season. The potatoes themselves wind up on the floor. His fork falls to the table with a loud clatter.

There’s a beat of awkward, utterly disbelieving silence, undercut by the background thrum of rattling silverware and a whirring receipt printer and—

Narcissa laughs.

It’s a small sound, breathless, high-pitched, genuine, equal parts horrified and hysterical and rusty from disuse, partially muffled by the napkin she grabs, scrubs over her cheeks, but it still counts.

It still _sticks._

“There we go,” Potter says quietly, slouching sideways in his chair, his expression oddly intense, the juxtaposition between that intensity and her own laughter somehow emphasizing the ridiculousness of—this. All of it. The circumstances. Him and her and this no-name little diner in this no-name little town. CASH ONLY, reads the handwritten sign taped to the window. Where are they? Why are they here? What are they doing? What is _she_ doing? With him? With James Potter?

It’s that last one.

That last question.

It catches her off guard.

* * *

Narcissa drives again.

The air conditioning blasts out of the vents in the dash, fast and frigid and tangibly artificial, while the numbers on the temperature gauge affixed to the rearview mirror creep up and up the further west they go. Strands of her hair gradually begin escaping her vaguely sloppy French braid, tangled and sweaty, and her sunglasses slip down the bridge of her nose.

Potter can’t sit still, constantly bouncing his knee or fiddling with his phone or cracking his knuckles or impulsively switching radio stations—his taste in music seems to range almost exclusively from screechy, upbeat glam rock to whiny, depressing, post-grunge ballads—and he drinks nothing but Gatorade and gas station slushies in order to “stay hydrated”, perpetually leaving his mouth dyed a spectacularly bruised shade of dark purple-blue.

They stop a lot.

Narcissa isn’t sure why.

First, it’s a red-roofed warehouse-style candy store with a veritable floor-to-ceiling _wall_ of wooden buckets filled to the brim with saltwater taffy, dozens of different flavors and patterns and colors; James closes his eyes and spins himself in a circle and staggers around, arms outstretched, scooping up whatever he comes into contact with and not bothering to check what it is, if he even likes it, dropping it into a single bulk-bin bag and then winking at her, like it’s a game, like they’re both playing; there’s an attached gift shop, too, where he spends fifteen minutes looking at ceramic refrigerator magnets before wordlessly buying a rainbow tie-dyed bucket hat emblazoned with a singing cartoon catfish.

“For Sirius,” James says, deadly serious. “Should we grab Regulus one, too?”

Narcissa doesn’t laugh, but her lips do twitch, just a little, as she shifts into reverse and peels out of the sprawling dirt parking lot.

Next, it’s a system of historic, troublingly damp caves with a maze of wobbly stainless-steel walkways threaded throughout, tour guides with lanterns and flashlights and construction helmets milling around the entrance; interestingly, it’s _James_ who refuses to get out of the car there, and Narcissa who argues about it with him for five minutes—which is approximately four and a half minutes longer than she ever expected to care to. After that, there’s a drive-in movie theater off Route 66 that’s themed and enormous and seemingly hasn’t been renovated or updated since the turn of the last century; a billboard advertises a double-feature at nine o’clock— _The Breakfast Club_ and _Jaws_ —but they’d have to stay there for the night to go.

James looks at her askance as they approach the turn-off. Considering. Deliberate. “Yeah, fuck that. Keep going.”

And the way he says it— _fuck that, keep going_ —makes her scalp tingle. Her lower abdomen clench.

Finally, there’s the totem pole.

“It’s a folk-art installation,” James corrects her, sounding thoroughly amused. The totem pole itself is made out of concrete and located in the middle of a large park several miles off the highway, surrounded by summer-green grass and breeze-rustled trees. It’s painted all over. Distinctly phallus-shaped. “It kind of . . . uh, it kind of looks like—”

“Yes,” Narcissa says evenly. “It does.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“No, I absolutely do.”

He grins, suddenly, slow and sly, chuckling as he slings an arm over her shoulder—he’s taller than her, but not by very much, maybe two or three inches. The callused pad of his thumb tapping against her bare skin, idly rubbing at it, sending a telltale shiver down the notches of her spine, is a remarkable invasion of her personal space. All the metaphorical caution tape. The sun is sinking in the sky, shimmering on the horizon, the last waning shards of it beating hot and tacky against the nape of her neck.

She doesn’t duck away.

She should, probably.

From him.

From the sun.

But she doesn’t.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


End file.
